Cheap Energy club

boomish

So I switched with MSE Cheap energy club earlier this year, recently I got an email saying I'm paying to much, so looking into it today I find I still have 6 months to go on existing OVO plan, so will have to pay exit fee's and Cheap energy club have me on completely wrong plan, I correct all that and it shows me a much larger saving of £161 to switch to Extra Energy.. I hate all this switching it's such ball ache, probably why they do it so often..
So I will have to pay £60 early exit fees but will get £30 cash back for switching.. but I really no longer have any trust in the Energy Club, besides which it's run by Money Supermarket whom I loath as it's just more middle men taking our cash..

Any advice?

current plan
Gas: 3.61p/kWh
Standing Charge: 25.99p/day
Electricity: 10.80p/kWh
Standing Charge: 27.40p/day
Exit fee's -£ 60

Extra energy
Gas - 3.470p per kWh
Electricity -11.760p per kWh
exit fee's £50
Cashback £30 to join..

my average 18344 kWh gas and 6501 kWh electric

JJ_Egan

Use a checker site like moneysuperwhatsit .
Work out your best tariff then type the site in your web browser .
Or just get a price from every supplier that way you can avoid comparison sites .


Or just grab a BG standard tariff and ignore money saving .


Extra energy
Gas - 3.470p per kWh
Electricity -11.760p per kWh
exit fee's £50
Cashback £30 to join..

Missing standing charges .

boomish

Bit weird though isn’t it, I thought that was the point of MSE, but it seems the energy club just fuels the comparison sites then end up inflating all of the prices!! these !!!!!!s make nothing just taking another rake from an already expensive overpriced energy company..

Pincher

The Energy Club is like an estate agent that makes money only if we keep buying and selling houses. If we stay put for years, they make no money.

40 years ago, the bank my mother worked for had a shopping club. They contact distributors and get discounts for bulk orders of fridges etc. The club had to handle warranty claims etc., so it cannot be a simple take it away and don't blame me if it goes wrong set up. They had permanent staff, in the credit union sense.

Energy generation and distribution is nothing like buying fridges.
The cost of the electricity and gas fluctuate wildly with the world's events. The customers refuse to pay and you can't cut them off.
If anybody dared to set up an REAL Energy Club and handled your account, any profit will go on therapy for the staff.

To the Energy Club, you are just a Bangladashi peasant in Thailand. They sell you to First Utility for £50, and it's up to you to dig a tunnel to get out.

cklass

boomish wrote: »

I really no longer have any trust in the Energy Club, besides which it's run by Money Supermarket whom I loath as it's just more middle men taking our cash..

Is there a particular reason why you don't trust Cheap Energy Club?

By compiling all the energy tariffs so that you can compare your options, Cheap Energy Club has provided you with a service. In return, they are hoping you will switch supplier through them so that they can earn a commission, £30 of this commission is given to you as cashback, but if you don't want them to earn any money for providing you with this service, you can simply switch directly with the supplier. You'll miss out on the £30 cashback but can live happy in the knowledge that Money Supermarket has missed out on a commission (although you should be aware that MSE is a part of the Money Supermarket Group, so they may have earned some money through your use of this website at some point anyway.)

There are some threads with feedback on Extra Energy on the forum, I would recommend reading them before switching.

chanz4

extra energy is worse than npower, that's because its management is ex npower

Robin_Davies

The Cheap Energy Club is an excellent idea, and could work really well, but currently it is encouraging unnecessary switches by making the assumption that members will do nothing unless told to. Here's the problem:

The Club calculates potential savings by working out the costs of a year's usage based on estimates you provide. All of the alternative tariffs it suggests will be running for at least another year, whether they be fixed or variable, so in calculating their costs, it does the best job it can.

But if you are currently on a fix that ends in less than a year, it calculates your annual cost by assuming that, when the fix ends, you won't notice, and your supplier will put you on their standard tariff which costs a lot more. Compare this with, say, another fix that ends a year or more ahead, and you will see apparent savings that, as long as your current tariff is still running, may well not exist in practice.

This is a fundamental mistake which, for everyone on a fix that ends in less than a year, may easily cause them to switch early to another tariff that, in the short term, will actually cost them more money. I almost did this yesterday.

So if you're on a fix that ends in less than a year, you need to do your own calculations so see if a switch now is really a saving. However, now that suppliers provide standardised Tariff Information Labels, "doing the math" is not too arduous.

Consumerist

boomish wrote: »

. . . and it shows me a much larger saving of £161 to switch to Extra Energy..

Any advice?

Extra Energy is getting some really bad reviews lately so I would give them a miss for a year or two until a better picture of their customer services emerges.

cklass

Robin_Davies wrote: »

This is a fundamental mistake which, for everyone on a fix that ends in less than a year, may easily cause them to switch early to another tariff that, in the short term, will actually cost them more money. I almost did this yesterday.

This has been discussed before. The Cheap Energy Club has to do this because of Ofgem regulations, which state that these estimates have to take into account any future tariff changes. Since it is impossible to predict what tariffs will be available in the future, it can only estimate your usage using the standard tariff. It does make it clear that it is doing this.

redux

Robin_Davies wrote: »

But if you are currently on a fix that ends in less than a year, it calculates your annual cost by assuming that, when the fix ends, you won't notice, and your supplier will put you on their standard tariff which costs a lot more. Compare this with, say, another fix that ends a year or more ahead, and you will see apparent savings that, as long as your current tariff is still running, may well not exist in practice.

This is a fundamental mistake which, for everyone on a fix that ends in less than a year, may easily cause them to switch early to another tariff that, in the short term, will actually cost them more money. I almost did this yesterday.

Yes, I did some comparisons in the last week or so, and found significant savings compared to the current deal.

Then I looked at the actual rates by staying with the same provider but on a later expiring deal - a good saving on electricity even though the electricity units would be exactly the same price.

After spending a bit of time wondering if all the sites had poor calculation methods I eventually realised what you've said there.

It's a shame that they don't bother to explain this point, and instead go in the other direction and also neglect to account for exit fees either.

catwoman73

If you use https://www.energyhelpline.com there is a box you can tick that overrides the 'assume you go onto the standard rate after your deal ends' assumption, which does the maths for you - I don't know what it is based on instead of the standard tariff.

I was confused because comparison sites were telling me that I could save by switching, but then I looked at the prices on the supposedly cheaper tarrifs and they were very expensive so I couldn't see how I could save. But it turns out that the fixes are just cheaper than the standard tariff, which I don't ever think I have paid in over 20 years as a homeowner.

I just treat gas and electric as something you have to shop around for every year, like insurance.